491 - (FREE TO READ) The two pillars of progress
On motivation, visualisation and mindset.
Copyright © 2024 by Jeth Randolph
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How do you progress?
This is one of the main reasons that people stop training or let their goals drift: the inability to see if or when they are progressing.
This is especially challenging for those who train alone or while trying to overcome the demands of their lives that will quickly try to take precedence over what others will see as “hobbies” like fight training.
It’s easy to find an excuse to pause and take it easy.
But growth needs resistance in order to be realised. And that resistance needs to be incremental and constant.
Our venue was closed for the usual night this week and rather than just take a week off, the guys that regularly show up sourced an alternate venue - an old mill on the outskirts of town, and we had a great, productive night of training there, and I got the honour of watching how far these guys have progressed and changed as they enthusiastically threw punches at each other.
Learned skills have now become learned habits:
They set up their own training areas at home and put in the hours.
They invest in the kit that they need to get the most from the training time they have.
They invest spare time in conditioning work to improve their physical potential for the performance of skills.
Transformation.
What is progress?
It will boil down to two things:
Pressure
There’s no magic, no guru to follow, no shortcuts that you can buy.
Just the consistent WILL to press forward and achieve something worthwhile.
I’ve written many times of my own physical limitations because it’s important to express that reality to others, I think it’s made me quite unpopular in many ways, probably with those who don’t want to consider that they too will find themselves slipping down the food chain if they age or get injured (for example) and have to adapt training accordingly to the new realities.
But this is the truth of our lives, we are not perfect, we struggle. But that struggle is in some ways the thing that gives meaning to our progress - or as it should also be seen: our achievements.
Despite the odds being against us, we continue to fight on.
Maybe some that didn’t see it before might now start to understand the link to the topic at hand?
A total mindset that applies to all aspects of life. Therefore, the converse is true, if you fold when the pressure is slight, how will you react when truly tested?
Time:
There’s a whole world out there that wants to step over you and get what could have been yours.
Every time you make an excuse to not invest in making yourself stronger, improving your fitness, showing up to class, or practicing on your own – you are giving the world an advantage over you.
Make the time.
Show up.
Put the effort in.
Right now you have the greatest gift that there is to have: a life.
One day it will be over and there will be what you had done and what you had not.
There’s a cemetery that I see from the window of the train I take sometimes. Every time I pass it, it erases any problems I thought I had and reinforces the feeling that there is still a possibility because I have breath in me, unlike so many friends and people whom I have loved, who do not.
If you don’t show up today, how many more times will you make an excuse and let time slip away?
Show up.
Keep your word to yourself that you will change something and improve.
Spend your time applying forward pressure, even if it seems to be measured in millimeters.
Know that if the time comes, you are one of those who will not meekly back down.
This is how it is done.
Start today.
Fuck yeah. Great writing for ppl who train, masterpiece. LFG!!